A DYING LIGHT IN CORDUBA

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I must have been looking grim. For once the Fates decided that I was so pessimistic I might give up this job altogether and deprive them of a lot of fun. So for the first time ever they decided to offer me a helping hand.

The hand was ink-stained and nail-bitten, attached to a weedy arm which protruded from a shrunken long- sleeved tunic with extremely ragged cuffs. The arm hung from a shoulder over which was slung a worn satchel; its flap was folded back for easy access and I could see note-tablets inside. The shoulder served as a bony hanger for the rest of the tunic, which came down below the knees of a short, sad-looking man with pouchy eyes and uncombed hair. Every dry old thong of his sandals had curled back on itself at the edges. He had the air of being much rebuffed and cursed. He was clearly ill-paid. I deduced, even before he confirmed the tragedy, that he worked for the government.

'Is your name Falco?' I shook the inky hand cautiously as a sign that it might be. I wondered how he knew. 'I'm Gnaeus Drusillus Placidus.'

'Pleased to meet you,' I said. I wasn't. I had been half-enjoying myself remembering Selia as I prepared myself to visit her house. The interruption hurt.

'I thought you would be coming downriver to speak to me.'

'You knew I was here?' I ventured cautiously.

'The quaestor's clerk told me to look out for you.' The old black slave from Hadrumetum; the one who had lost the correspondence with Anacrites-or had it lifted from him.

'He didn't tell me about you!'

The man looked surprised. 'I'm the procurator,' he cried importantly. 'I supervise the port taxes and export tax.' My enthusiasm still failed to match his. In desperation he lowered his voice and hissed, 'It was me who started this!'

I nearly let myself down completely by asking 'Started what?'

But his urgency and the way he looked over his shoulder for eavesdroppers explained everything.

'It was you!' I murmured discreetly, but with the note of applause the man deserved. 'You were the sharp- eyed fellow who first wrote to Anacrites, sounding the alarm!'

FORTY-FIVE

I was looking at him keenly now. Still an unimpressive experience. I would like to complain that he behaved officiously, but he was just perfectly straight. Nobody likes a government official they cannot moan about.

We walked nearer to the water, deliberately looking casual. As a procurator he would have an office, but it would be stuffed with staff from the cache of public slaves. They would probably look honest-until the day when it counted. What he and I had to discuss could be the big secret they were all waiting to sell.

'What's your history?' I asked. 'You're not from Baetica? You sound Roman to me; you have the Palatine twang.'

He was not offended at the question. He was proud of his life, with reason. 'I am an imperial freedman. From Nero's time,' he felt obliged to add. He knew I would have asked. Palace freedmen are always judged by the regime when their career took off. 'But that does not affect my loyalty.'

'Anyone who struggled to serve the state under Nero will welcome Vespasian with a huge sigh of relief. Vespasian knows that.'

'I do my job.' It was a statement I believed.

'So how did you reach this position?'

'I bought my freedom, worked in commerce, earned enough to be granted equestrian rank, and offered myself for useful posts. They sent me here.' He had the kind of record I ought to pursue myself; maybe if I had been born a slave I might have managed it. Instead pride and obstinacy got firmly in my way.

'And now you've stirred up quite a controversy. What's the smell that you don't like?'

He did not answer immediately. 'Hard to say. I nearly did not make a report at all.'

'Did you discuss it with anyone?'

'The quaestor.'

'Cornelius?'

He looked shocked. 'Who else?' Clearly the new quaestor was not an alternative. 'Decent?'

'I liked him. No side. Did the job-you can't often say that!'

'How did Cornelius get along with the proconsul?'

'He was the chosen deputy, in the old-fashioned way. They had worked together before. He was the senior tribune when the old man had a legion. They came out as a pair. But now Cornelius needs a career move. He wants to show his face in the Senate. The old man agreed to release him.'

'After which he had to take whatever he was sent as a replacement! But I heard Cornelius hasn't gone back to Rome? He's traveling.'

An angry expression passed over Placidus' face. 'Cornelius going on his travels is all part of the nasty smell!' That was intriguing. 'Rome would have been too convenient, wouldn't it? He could have made the report on our problem himself.'

'What are you telling me, Placidus?'

'Cornelius was going back. He wanted to go back.'

'Keen?'

'Highly excited.' One of those. A careerist. I kept my face neutral. On the lower rung of the public service ladder, Placidus was a careerist himself. 'He was ready for politics. He wanted to get married too.'

'A fatalist! So where exactly is he?' I demanded, with a sinking feeling. For some reason I felt he was about to say the young man was dead.

'In Athens.'

Once I recovered from the unexpected answer I asked, 'What's the attraction in Athens?'

'You mean apart from art, history, language and philosophy?' asked Placidus rather dryly. I had an idea he was the type of cultural dreamer who would adore a trip to Greece. 'Well Cornelius didn't care much for those, in fact; he wasn't the type. Someone in Rome just happened to have an unused ticket on a ship from Gades to Piraeus; he spoke to Cornelius' father and offered free use of it.'

'Generous! Cornelius senior was delighted?'

'What father would turn down the chance of getting his son to the University like that?'

Well, mine, for one. But mine had long ago realized the more I learned-about anything-the less control he had over me. He never lavished art, history, language or philosophy upon me. That way he never had to face me faking gratitude.

But I could sympathize with Cornelius; he would have been trapped. No senatorial career comes cheap. Nor does marriage. To preserve good relations at home he had to go along with whatever embarrassment his parent well-meaningly bestowed on him-just because some acquaintance at the Curia had smiled and offered it. My own father was an auctioneer. He could recognize a bribe coming five miles away. Not all men are so adept.

So poor Cornelius only wanted to rush home to govern people, but he's stuck with a present that he would far rather dump- and he has his papa happily telling him it's a chance in a lifetime and he should be a grateful boy? Placidus, can I guess the name

of his benefactor? Someone Cornelius did not want to write a nice thank-you letter to? Can the name of Quinctius Attractus be dropped into this conversation without causing a misfit?'

'You've thrown a six, Falco.'

'I've thrown a double, I think.'

'You know how to play this game.'

'I've played before.'